“That bonehead who played the Crackpot of Monte Cristo in the guerilla theater production. I’ve been friends with him since our first year.”
After that, Ms. Noriko and I made a hearty rice porridge, and Chief-in-Chief Underpants put away the huge stacks of gifts. Then the four of us ate porridge and chatted about fond memories of the craziness at the school festival. I worried it might not be good for the director, but he expressed, “I feel better when I’m talking to people.” Then my clubmate came up in our conversation again.
“He was so desperate to play the Crackpot of Monte Cristo,” Chief-in-Chief Underpants pointed out. “I don’t know why.”
“Oh, really? He said he just happened to be passing by…”
“Ha! That takes some nerve. He basically hijacked the play.”
“He has his own plans,” the director insisted with a hard look at me. “I guess you wouldn’t understand.”
The winds of passion had been blowing so hard it seemed I’d caught a cold of passion. Thus, I became one of those legendary men to suffer lovesickness. I was quite pleased for a while, but when I made some frank observations of the symptoms, I realized that that wasn’t the case. It was just a cold. I probably got it from the director.
How stupid. This really sucks. There’s nothing charming about this at all.
As I was lamenting my luck, my symptoms rapidly worsened. Snot dripped from my nostrils like an overflowing sink. I coughed so hard I thought surely I’d start bringing up blood. My body felt as if it were literally made of lead, and it was no easy task to crawl out of my futon to go to school. Perhaps because I blew my nose too much, I developed a nasty zit above my lips. It was only a few days before Christmas, so this was really just unfair. Is there no god or Buddha?!
Despite everything, hard on myself as I am, I took it on as a challenge and insisted on going to school; the reason being my two labmates were already out with a cold, so if I collapsed, we wouldn’t have any data for our experiments. But surveying the deserted student lab, I saw the number of dropouts had only increased, and many a table was completely empty. The cold student lab with its run-down equipment was dreary on a good day, but now it had taken on an air of desolation. I felt as if I were watching the God of Colds punching students out right in front of me.
I performed experiments with shaky hands, broke a flask, blew toxic substances all over in a coughing fit, and fell asleep and nearly scorched my chin on a burner. Unable to watch me so exhausted with my lab coat buttoned all the way to my chin, the assistant professor stood me up and said, “It’s fine—just go home. Go home and sleep. The school’s practically shut down.”
As I walked across campus and watched withered leaves fluttering down, the frigidity of winter, my awful cold, and my loneliness all attacked in full force, and I nearly breathed my last. Thinking I had to escape all of that as soon as possible and burrow into my dear futon, I mounted my bicycle.
In order to intercept the God of Colds, I stopped by the grocery store on the corner of Shirakawa and Imadegawa. I walked along with a zombielike gait, hurling vitamin drinks, bottles of Pocari Sweat, pastries, fish burgers, and tissues into a basket, when I came upon a man standing there trying to catch his breath. He was carrying a large bottle of Coca-Cola and, for some reason, clutching a package of ginger. His eyes, half-closed, seemed to say, This is as far as my faculties of reason go. His hair was a disheveled mop, and his body was swaying slightly. He was obviously very sick.
I was thinking I’d seen him somewhere before, and in fact, it was Chief-in-Chief Underpants. No, he achieved his goal at the school festival, so he had no doubt cast off that fearsome underwear he’d had on for a year straight. So I suppose it should be “Former Chief-in-Chief Underpants” now. I didn’t have the energy to say hello, so I passed quickly behind him. He stood there absentmindedly with his bottle of Coke and didn’t seem to notice me.
I practically crawled back to my room and, after flinging the food into the fridge, immediately collapsed into my futon. The cold futon was warm before long and eased my shivers.
I’d been scheming to get the girl to visit me, but I couldn’t very well ask her now. That wasn’t how a gentleman did things. After mulling it over, I decided to spread a rumor to my club that somehow implied I was out suffering with a cold and wanted the black-haired maiden to rescue me.
But even though I sent that text for help, thirty minutes passed without a response. It was like I’d thrown a rock into the void. I could think of two reasons for that.
One was that no one wanted anything to do with me and they’d decided it wasn’t their problem.
The other was that everyone was out with a cold.
I hope it’s at least the second one, I thought as I fell asleep.
Everyone has different ways to get over a cold.
The first one that comes to mind is the grated apple my mom used to make for me. Remembering scooping the soft apple with a spoon and the texture as I chewed it up takes me back to those quiet mornings when I was home sick from elementary school—those painful yet sort of happy, sweet times. I almost never caught colds, so those memories are precious to me. When I ate grated apple and fell asleep hugging a Daruma doll, I’d get over the cold in no time. I suppose we can say that apples and Daruma are marvelously effective. Why did I sleep with a Daruma? Because my big sister taught me that putting one in your futon made it a protective charm.
I was going to visit Ms. Noriko that day. She was sick with a cold.
Ms. Noriko likes small, round Daruma, so I thought I’d teach her my sister’s charm. I was carrying a little doll that I’d picked up at the school festival.
Ms. Noriko’s house was in a little egg yolk–colored apartment building on the eastern slope of Mount Yoshida. As I trudged up the steep, narrow hill from Kaguraoka Street, a sprinkling of snow fell from the cold, gray sky. It may have been the first snow of the year.
When Ms. Noriko met with me, she observed, “Maybe I caught it when we visited the director,” and her tidy eyebrows crinkled. She always gave such a delicate, impermanent impression, but now she looked even more fragile, like a glass ornament that would break if you touched it.
“I was supposed to go to a Crackpot of Monte Cristo screening today, but I can’t.”
Chief-in-Chief Underpants’s guerilla theater production, The Crackpot of Monte Cristo, had been filmed by the Ablutions film club as they followed the play around campus. Apparently, they made a movie version by editing that footage and setting it to music and were going to show it. Ms. Noriko said she was supposed to go see it with Chief-in-Chief Underpants, but her fever didn’t go down, so she was stuck at home in frustration.
I explained the mysterious wonders a Daruma could work and was just tucking the doll into her futon when Chief-in-Chief Underpants showed up with a big bottle of Coca-Cola. But the visitor’s breathing was actually more labored than the patient’s; one look was enough to tell he had a bad cold. Despite his own high fever, he had walked the long road to her apartment under the cold sky.
Breathing with some difficulty, he set the bottle of Coke on the counter and took a package of ginger out of a grocery store bag.
“This is what you need for a cold.”
He poured Coke into a pot, added sliced ginger, and simmered it. Apparently, the secret ingredients in Coca-Cola are highly effective against colds, and adding ginger increases their effectiveness even more.
Ms. Noriko looked a bit troubled, but she put up with it and swallowed it down.
Chief-in-Chief Underpants seemed relieved he was able to have Ms. Noriko drink his hot ginger Coke, and he sat down cross-legged on the floor and hung his head. “I never caught a cold while I wasn’t changing my underwear,” he grumbled. “Well, I had lower-body diseases instead. I guess neither is very good.”
Ms. Noriko hugged the Daruma to her chest and said, “Thanks for coming all this way.”
“No problem. It was nothing. Now you’ll get over your cold.”
As I watched that kind exchange, I felt somehow happy. Getting along is beautiful! I thought.
“It’s too bad, though. We were supposed to go to that screening of The Crackpot of Monte Cristo today.”
“Oh, that’s not happening.”
“Why?”
“It got canceled because the cold hit everyone.”
“It spread that much?”
“I think the root of this evil is the director of the School Festival Office. Everyone who went to visit him got the cold, and it went on from there. The university is pretty much deserted.” With that, he looked toward me. “You should be careful.”
“I’m all right. I think the God of Colds must hate me.”
Chief-in-Chief Underpants and Ms. Noriko eventually started feeling so bad that they spoke less and less and finally just watched over each other with spacey fever eyes. I thought I’d better take my leave soon but wondered how the sky was doing. I stood up and went to the window.
I could hear the faint noise of leaves brushing against the glass.
When I pulled the curtain back, I gasped. I could see the buildings along Kaguraoka below, and beyond that, Mount Daimonji. The bottom of the hill was like a bowl, and the snow, falling harder now, had coated everything. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed as if all movement had stopped and the snowy neighborhood had gone quiet. Everyone’s caught a cold and is curled up in their futons listening for the sound of the first snow on their windows, I thought.
I leaned my forehead on the cold, foggy glass and stared out at the snowy neighborhood.
Still, though, what was going on?
God of Colds, God of Colds, why do you make such prodigious efforts?
Having drifted off to sleep once and woken up, my body felt even heavier. I struggled to drag myself out of my futon, and when I wobbled out into the cold hallway to the common bathroom, snow was blowing in from an open window in the hall. My teeth chattered loudly as I did my business.
Even once I was back in bed, I was beat. I couldn’t even project visions of my future on the dirty ceiling or bounce philosophical questions off the corners of the four-and-a-half-mat tatami room. I pulled the futon up overhead, curled into a ball, and hugged myself. It was an act of self-sufficiency stemming from the fact that I had no one to hold me and no one I could hold. Then I thought about her.
Staring into the darkness inside my futon without moving, I confronted the big, fundamental problem. Why, in the half a year since I’d met her, had I specialized only in moats, strayed from the correct path of love, and degenerated into a perpetual moat-filling machine? I could think of two potential answers. One was that I was a despicable chicken who couldn’t get a clear confirmation of her feelings. That brought my dignity into question, so I set it aside for the time being. Which left only one answer: Maybe I didn’t actually have a crush on her?
There is this evil assumption people make about university students—namely, that they already have significant others. But it’s actually the reverse. All the foolish students, pressured by this assumption that “all university students have significant others,” race around to keep up appearances, which results in the strange phenomenon of everyone and their brother having a significant other, which in turn fosters the assumption.
I needed to take a good, hard look at myself. Was I perhaps being pressured by this? Was I putting on the airs of a solitary man while actually succumbing to the latest trend and falling in love with the idea of love? If a maiden is in love with love, that’s still pretty cute, but men who are in love with love are all just creepy!
What do I even know about her? It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that aside from the back of her head, which I’ve stared at so hard I’ve practically burned a hole in it, I didn’t know a single thing about her. So how did I fall for her, then? The reason isn’t clear. Couldn’t that mean she just happened to get sucked into a void in my heart?
I used her to try to fill the emptiness of my heart. That motive’s weak and all wrong. I should be ashamed of myself. I should prostrate myself before her and apologize. Before trying for an easy solution, I should have paid more attention to my own situation. I should face the wall, blush red as a Daruma doll, and sulk. I can only become a complete human by using this adversity as a foothold.
Eventually, I got tired of thinking, and my eyes, vacant with fever, stared at my bookshelf.
I remembered that summer afternoon I spent wandering around looking for her at the used bookfair. The feeling of sweat dripping down my forehead, the ceaseless song of the cicadas, the strong rays of light coming through the old treetops… We sat next to each other on a bench with a cover over it and drank Ramune soda… Wait, did I drink Ramune soda with her? Was that just a fantasy of mine? I can remember the cold flavor hitting my throat, and I can see her face so vividly, smiling as she held the pure-white picture book next to me, but…
As I continued to sit on the bench, I’d assumed The Thinker’s pose. The riding ground that stretched north-south grew gradually shadowy starting from the north side, as if it were sinking into a lake. When I looked up at the sky, there were gray clouds that appeared to be full of water. That heart-wrenching, sweet smell presaging a shower filled the air.
Before long, it was coming down, so I took shelter in a nearby tent. Listening to the rain drumming on the roof, I hunted through the bookshelves, and a collection of writing by Yumeji Takehisa caught my eye. I picked it up to flip through it and noticed a poem:
Waiting for your lover is unbearable
Making your lover wait, more unbearable still
Then what of me, all alone
Neither waiting nor awaited?
The rain pounded down.
If it’s a midsummer afternoon, why am I so cold? Because of the sudden shower? Because I’m all alone?
“Then what of me, all alone?!”
Eventually, the rain gave way to striking rays of sun. I ran through the never-ending mountains of books looking for her. I’ve got to find her before the bookfair ends. And then I’ve got to reach out for the same book as she does, I schemed. I was so impatient. Suddenly, I saw someone who looked like her. That catlike gait, that glossy black hair… But the figure kept running away, beyond the infinite rows of bookshelves. The never-ending bookcases came between us. How far does this bookfair even go? Why am I chasing her only to be left behind? Hey, hey, why do you make such futile efforts?
The sun finally went down. Orangey lanterns lit up between the tents fading into the twilight. There were no people in sight. I was standing stock-still in the middle of a deserted used bookfair at night, stunned. Just then, beyond the dark trees, a mysterious triple-decker train radiating bright lights went by down the approach to Shimogamo Shrine. The lights gleaming in the windows illuminated the silent forest. Flags of the world and various streamers fluttered on a string in the night.
I’d seen that train somewhere before, and I watched alone as it went past.
Alone.
“Then what of me, all alone?!” This time, I screamed.
Asada Ame was the invention of a doctor of herbal medicine, Sohaku Asada, during the Edo period. Mr. Sohaku Asada studied the Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders under Kyoto’s Dr. Shinsai Nakanishi and, following the Meiji Restoration, became the imperial physician. A man named Mr. Horiuchi learned to make cough drops from him and promoted it far and wide with the cute slogan “Good medicine that’s sweet on the tongue,” and it still exists today. It’s a small yet potent throat drop that has battled all the worst colds in history. And one mustn’t forget its brave struggle against the Spanish Flu that raged during the Taisho period and claimed many lives. Good medicine that’s sweet on the tongue!
That is, I have nothing bad to say about it. I’d like to be as brave myself.
…is just me repeating what I heard.
The owner of the used bookstore Gabi Shobo told us that story when Mr. Higuchi and I went to visit him in his sickbed.
That morning had been the last lecture of December.
I ate a big lunch at the central cafeteria before heading to the clock tower, where I met up with Mr. Higuchi. From there, we took the bus to Shijo Kawaramachi. Mr. Higuchi paid the fare with some tickets he got from Ms. Hanuki. He said her fever had finally gone down some, which was a relief.
Christmas was clearly right around the corner in Shijo Kawaramachi. The whole area was festive with red and green decorations, and cheerful Christmas melodies were playing from here and there. The Hankyu Department Store had a huge banner announcing the arrival of Christmas. Mr. Higuchi was getting lots of tissue packets with advertisements from ladies dressed like Santa Claus. “If I catch a cold, these will come in handy,” he said. “It’s Christmas everywhere you look!”
“Yeah. Seems fun.”
“Of course, it’s a foreign custom that has nothing to do with us. But you know, what’s fun is good!”
“I totally agree!”
Mr. Higuchi and I spent a little while getting tipsy on the holiday spirit and played around with Santa merchandise we found on display, but before long, we remembered our original objective with a start.
We turned into a narrow alley going east, went past an abandoned schoolhouse, and left the bustle of Kawaramachi behind. Once we crossed a little bridge over the Takase River, we were in Kiyamachi in the daytime. There were no mysterious festivities like the night we were all out walking and drinking there. Mr. Higuchi turned down an alley between some buildings and guided me to a wooden house with a latticed door. When he called “Hello?” and slid the door open, it smelled like my grandmother’s house. Mr. Higuchi didn’t wait for an answer and thumped right in.
The bookseller was sunk deep in a green sofa in the first-floor living room, listening absentmindedly to the radio. When he saw that Mr. Higuchi didn’t even hesitate to walk in, he groaned, “Don’t just barge into people’s houses!”
“We’re here to visit! We brought you a get-well-soon gift,” announced Mr. Higuchi.
The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl Page 18